Abstract

Background

A fundamental pre-requisite for the clinical success in dental implant surgery is
the fast and stable implant osseointegration. The press-fit phenomenon occurring at
implant insertion induces biomechanical effects in the bone tissues, which ensure
implant primary stability. In the field of dental surgery, the understanding of the
key factors governing the osseointegration process still remains of utmost importance.
A thorough analysis of the biomechanics of dental implantology requires a detailed
knowledge of bone mechanical properties as well as an accurate definition of the jaw
bone geometry.

Methods

In this work, a CT image-based approach, combined with the Finite Element Method (FEM),
has been used to investigate the effect of the drill size on the biomechanics of the
dental implant technique. A very accurate model of the human mandible bone segment
has been created by processing high resolution micro-CT image data. The press-fit
phenomenon has been simulated by FE analyses for different common drill diameters
(DA = 2.8 mm, DB = 3.3 mm, and DC = 3.8 mm) with depth L = 12 mm. A virtual implant model has been assumed with a cylindrical
geometry having height L = 11 mm and diameter D = 4 mm.

Results

The maximum stresses calculated for drill diameters DA, DB and DC have been 12.31 GPa, 7.74 GPa and 4.52 GPa, respectively. High strain values have
been measured in the cortical area for the models of diameters DA and DB, while a uniform distribution has been observed for the model of diameter DC . The maximum logarithmic strains, calculated in nonlinear analyses, have been ϵ = 2.46,
0.51 and 0.49 for the three models, respectively.

Conclusions

This study introduces a very powerful, accurate and non-destructive methodology for
investigating the effect of the drill size on the biomechanics of the dental implant
technique.

Further studies could aim at understanding how different drill shapes can determine
the optimal press-fit condition with an equally distributed preload on both the cortical
and trabecular structure around the implant.